


a key to the lock of a heart-shaped box

by Morbane



Category: Triangle (2009)
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, Dark, Drabble Sequence, Fix-It, Gen, Horror, Implied Future Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:12:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a triangle, if one angle changes, so must the others.<br/>So the present controls the past, and the past controls the future: and at the apex, sacrifice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a key to the lock of a heart-shaped box

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annie D (scaramouche)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scaramouche/gifts).



In the corridor where she finds her keys, there is a mirror. 

She picks the keys up, and as she rises, she sees another mirror in the mirror: she is caught between the two. She’s heard about this. Jess to infinity. She can’t help shifting from side to side to try to see over her own shoulder, but the mirrors are perfectly locked.

In one of Tommy’s books, there is a story in which two facing mirrors make a trap for a wicked fairy. And a mirror was the downfall of an evil stepmother, too, wasn’t it? But that’s not her.

It’s disorienting to stare into her own eyes. The longer she stands there, the stranger she feels; images (memories?) occur to her at random, as though some of her thoughts belong to other Jesses.

One of the thoughts that comes from nowhere is: _The whole ship is like this pair of mirrors._ And, _Why can’t the evil fairy leave the trap? How can you take yourself out of the picture?_

She steps away from the mirrors, dizzy, (and maybe that’s just having nearly drowned, maybe it’s nothing at all) and that’s when she realizes the keys shouldn’t be here.

* * *

The locket slips and clatters through the grating. It joins others there: twenty, or fifty, no, a hundred. Jess makes a sound her throat wasn’t ready for. It hurts.

She grasps at the locket’s chain, but it’s out of reach. She imagines tearing up the grating, but cringes from the idea of putting her hand into a hole that defies... everything. (How deep is it? What if it fills up? How could it fill up?)

She wants to block it out. She grabs at a plastic raincoat, and slaps it down over the hole. She stares very hard at it, not because she wants to keep seeing the pile of gold, but because she wants to know if it’ll catch her eye again, if she returns this way.

It ripples. Not the raincoat, but the hoard under it, like the universe blinking.

Where there were a hundred, there are now fifty, or twenty – no, one.

She whimpers, and she doesn’t understand what she’s done, but she’s done something, and when she strikes the blow that sends her enemy overboard, the falling body glints at the neck with _light_ , and there’s hope in her horror (and horror in her hope).

* * *

She tells Greg, “I have a son,” and that's the crux: anything goes, because there’s more at stake than her. 

So when she sees her own face under the hood, she understands: she doesn’t forgive, the way she doesn’t forgive herself for Tommy. She just keeps hoping all of this can change.

She leans against the railing. The new survivors come on board, herself among them. She kills, and she wins, even the last battle, against herself. What now?

New survivors come.

_No._

_How do you take yourself out of the picture?_

She had a burden of guilt before she even boarded this boat, and yet she has to trust that past Jess, who hasn’t yet murdered. Who might forgive and let go – even if she has to learn those lessons for herself.

Maybe there’s a way to save Tommy; but it isn’t this. This time, when only she is left to confront herself on the deck, the old Jess grabs the new, and over they go. In that moment, there is no yacht on the horizon; the third Jess isn't in the picture yet, or maybe, ever.

The _Aeolus_ fades as they fall: a trick of light refracted: a mirage.


End file.
